


Here There Be Monsters

by Oricalcon



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Blood Content, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sex Later On, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Ships to Be Added, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Apocalypse, Tags May Change, Teratophillia, Transformation, Virus Monster AU, monster au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 07:38:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14564187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oricalcon/pseuds/Oricalcon
Summary: The rust-rotting heart of the city held many secrets, and glittered in the dust choked fire of the burgeoning light. It was a sight the average man might describe as the world burning, when the sun rose and painted cracked glass with vivid shades of orange and red.To Jack, it was just another morning in his own corner of purgatory.





	Here There Be Monsters

The old soldier paid no heed to the wounded cries of the ruined landscape, eyes trained through the magnified view of his tactical visor. The wind screamed in his ears and the city groaned beneath him like a cacophony of dying whales. It demanded his attention, buffeted his frame, but he remained laser-focused on the task at hand. Sitting above the crumbling skyscrapers, Jack Morrison tightened his core and shifted as he rode the unforgiving currents that sent his makeshift stand swaying and rocking.

The old outpost he was nestled in known simply as The Needle had once served as an evacuation point twenty years ago. It was bracketed against a formerly prolific space needle, easily accessible by hovercraft. Intended to be used as a temporary route to carry away the uninfected as the city burned, the outpost was never meant to last; nowadays, it was a treacherous climb. His current perch was held together by the engineering equivalent of paperclips and bubble gum. The Needle’s watchtower was only accessible to the deft infected and one very determined supersoldier, and his commanders in The Militia had  warned and ordered away from the outpost many a time.

The base of The Needle was a dangerous locale itself and the top a foolhardy trip. To a lone soldier with little fear of death, it was the best view straight into the rust-rotting heart of the city. When the sun rose and painted cracked glass with vivid shades of orange and red, the average man might describe it as the world burning. To Jack, it was just another morning in his own corner of purgatory.  
From here, the soldier squinted into a world tainted crimson from the dust-choked light of the rising sun, mentally picking his way through the city to begin the daily routine. He adjusted his sights, binocular vision picking out the landmarks and indicators he'd mapped on previous excursions. Ahead, the collapsing skeletal roof of a massive football stadium. Left of it, the broken, root-like spine of the skyway that snaked between the jagged teeth of twisted skyscrapers. Following the line of the old thoroughfare brought him to a gaping maw of a blasted out office building just west of a collapsed subway tunnel. Jack was sure the ruined space had been a major bank at one point, but now it stood only as a silent reminder of the war that sought to end humanity itself. Shattered glass that glittered at its front in the morning light-- crystallized fire, and a cool blue marker from his heads-up display-- were the only indicators of the path Jack had marked on his map days before.

Feet shifting to brace himself, the corrugated deck of the watchtower keened with a particularly violent shudder as Jack procured a hand-drawn map and tattered compass from his kit. He re-marked the area, a second pass for safety’s sake in a city that could change overnight. Potential trails, newly collapsed buildings, exposed infrastructure, and obvious hazards were ticked away with practised ease while Jack tallied screenshots with his visor for posterity. Ten minutes passed in methodical silence before he tucked away the tools and braced his hands against the railing to lean forward. He huffed in lonesome amusement at his own motion and shook his head, as though moving ten inches towards downtown could afford him a better view.

Just past the bank, at a break between the fallen columns of the once majestic superhighway, Jack spotted his quarry—his whole reason for risking the climb up The Needle—emerging from the shadows overhanging the shattered concrete.

The creature was huge, a stark void against the rising daylight. Though it stood on two limbs it was hunched under the weight of its own bulk, picking its way through the rubble alternating between two legs and four. Coiling, heavy smoke sloughed off its jagged black carapace as it padded down the street at a leisurely, unconcerned pace, obscuring a better view of its frame. When its head turned, attention caught by something Jack couldn’t see, the reason for the monster’s namesake caught the light: a hooded neck that framed the uncanny visage of a bone-white animal skull.

“The Reaper out in broad daylight,” Jack mused as he sucked at his teeth, face twisting into a scowl beneath his mask. Though not a particularly unusual sight, Reaper was well known for being active after sunrise and before sunset; however, it was this habit that in and of itself was unusual. Disconcerting, even, for the daylight hours belonged to humanity.

The biologically engineered monsters that seemed to outnumber man five to one, twenty years out from the fall of the last known human bastion, defied all known rhyme and reason. They scorned physics, laughed at theories of evolution, and spat in the face of whatever supposed higher power shaped the world. The abominations belied all sense and judgement; no two monsters were ever alike. There was but one rule the creatures followed. While the scientists and sociologists had talked circles around each other when the outbreak first started as to _why_ the omnics would cater to such a restrictive trait for what was supposed to be a world ending viral-mutagen epidemic, it was a steadfast rule:

They only came out at night.

 

\----

 

It took Jack less than fifteen minutes get his supplies packed and make his way back down The Needle. With his enhancements he was able to take longer drops and harder falls with only mild complaints from his aging knees. He moved as quick as he could before he imposed the risk of shaking the tattered old building apart at the seams. Despite the occasional metallic screech of the beleaguered tower, Jack descended quickly and efficiently. Taking a moment to survey the area before he departed, the wayward soldier scarfed down a few stale bricks of energy bars. He was sure the bars were well past their expiration date but he couldn’t bring himself to muster up enough energy to care. He was a supersoldier, and food was food in an age where the only thing that mattered was getting enough calories in to make it to the next day.

Scents and flavors of buttery bread, bright farm fresh vegetables and warm fatty meat drifted into his thoughts as his stomach once again complained about his downright abusive behavior. God, what he wouldn’t give for vegetables that weren't canned and protein that wasn’t a mystery; 'compliments of the hunting party', the kitchen would say, and Jack had spent a night throwing up the first time someone joked it was cooked monster. He quickly stamped down the memory with another bite of the bar, even as his mind helpfully supplied that it wouldn’t take too long to loop back around to the apple tree he saw six blocks back. Even if they were horribly sour unripe crabapples, it'd at least be different than stale granola.

With a last weary sigh and a swig of lukewarm water to wash the taste of grain and horse piss out of his mouth, Jack tossed the wrapper and the crumbs to the birds. He brushed off of his hands, grimaced at the pressurized hiss of replacing his visor, and began the journey back to his bunk, the only comfort he had left in this unforgiving world.

 

\----

 

Jack did not stray from the sunlight as he moved at a steady jog away from The Needle, through the monster-infested downtown known as The Territory. He made his way due east, towards the military’s forward base, Point Delta, on the cusp of The City’s metropolitan area. He had to keep moving. Jack didn’t doubt that Reaper had scented him milling about on the outskirts of its home, and he was keen on putting distance between himself and the historically aggressive monster before nightfall. He had turned around at the first signs of Reaper’s territorial warnings: the picked over carcasses, the fresh, recognizable gouges in the pavement and walls, and the territorial musk that Jack’s keen nose could easily pick up on. Jack had seen monsters do downright suicidal things over protecting their “territories”. Whether it was the ten mile haven Reaper had violently carved out for itself in the center of the city, or a singular empty hut occupied by a starving wretch who refused to go down without a fight, monsters lived and died for their “homes”.

Once the tainted sunrise burned away into the light of mid morning, the scenery gleamed a healthy dew-dusted emerald along his stride. Plant life ravaged The City where the soil was still healthy enough to hold a seed, and mother nature had aggressively retaken her lands where humanity no longer held her back. The greenery always served to raise Jack’s spirits, reminding him of softer, simpler times, even though the roots of trees now covered more ground in The City than the routes that once trafficked man to and fro. Deer trails crossed the high grass in front of Jack where the asphalt had been cracked and split by the reaching tendrils of determined flora. He took the most well trodden path as it twined haphazardly through an intersection-turned-meadow. The trail carried him down a violently emptied side street, choked with weeds and roots, cars flattened against the front of shops where a military plow had careened them out of the way to clear the area for response vehicles. Jack kept firmly in the middle of the cracked road, and reminded himself to ignore the way that crawling things shadowed his movement in the reflections of broken widows. His light jog became a more determined trot when the skittering shadows cried out hoarsely, all nonsense words and ragged pleas for help; the voices, picking and choosing from their limited vocabulary, trying to find something that would get him to stop and come within reach of their hungry jaws.

 

\----

 

He ran the day from sunrise to sunset before he saw signs of other active human life, in a warm glow from behind the frosted glass of a small ramshackle diner just outside of Point Delta’s main patrol route. The building stood stark against the waning hours of daylight, its tilted red roof and tarnished silver airfoil design a throwback to days before even his own parents were born. The sight might have been a relief, could have even been his camp for the night, if not for the obvious occupants inside. With a quiet curse Jack swerved off of his path towards the building, puffing out an exhausted sigh before drawing his sidearm and slowing to a gravel-crunching prowl.

One sweep of the visor told him everything he needed to know. Empty cans and metal scrap strung up between makeshift stakes acted as a rudimentary alarm system, fresh blast-charred pavement, and the lingering smell of motor-oil and cooked meat were all signs that pointed to Junkers having taken shelter there in a pause from their "walkabout".

He circled the parking lot, taking in the situation and noting several freshly-staked signs warning all potential intruders away from trying any funny business. A more thorough investigation of the diner’s parking lot revealed various makeshift shrapnel bombs, landmines, and one particularly bloodstained bear trap haphazardly shoved beneath the cracked tarmac and crumbling asphalt. Jack internally warred between shouting or jangling the cans to grab the occupants’ attention. He settled instead on backing out of shrapnel range and pitching a rock at the entrance just hard enough to dent the metal and slightly buckle the door.

Jack thanked the soldier enhancement program, not for the first time, as sensitive ears picked out the slapstick comedy act that ensued. A startled swear, the sound of something catching flame that shouldn’t have, a surprisingly throaty boom, followed by a louder “ _Shite!_ ” capped off by a cacophony of ear-splitting shouting. The old soldier couldn’t help but smirk in amusement, pistol trained on the diner as the buckled door flew open. A solitary figure with grime-covered skin and smoking hair making the noise of twenty men stomped outside coughing and wheezing. He was followed by a cloud of greasy brown smoke.

“Who the hell d’you think you are, bangin’ a man’s door down at all hours of the day?” the man screeched. “I ought to send you right back where you came from you blast ended gobshite!”

There was a pause as the beanpole of a man, heedless of any danger he was in, gulped down clear air. It took two false starts for the old soldier to speak as the skinny man heaved for breath, Jack’s voice rough and dry from disuse. “Thought you two died, to be honest. Haven’t seen you around in a bit.”

“What, so the first thing you do is pelt a man’s home with rocks?! What - aw for chrissake 76, put away the party popper, y’bloody dipstick! You’d be dead six ways to Sunday if Roadie didn’t hear you comin’ a mile away!” the Junker punctuated with an almost manic laugh.

Jack shrugged, unsure if the man could see it or not, and answered with a grunt before putting the pistol back in its holster. “Formalities, Jamison. Couldn’t be sure if you’d try to kill me again.”

“Kill... you? Kill you?! Hah! Now there’s a good idea! I’ll do you right that if you call me Jamison again! It’s Junkrat to you, y’old drongo!” the Junker crowed as he weaved between the set traps and mines. “And I oughta! I oughta blow you ta’ kingdom come for how you left the place! You eh… you...” Junkrat’s head of steam petered out as he stopped in front of Jack, his face losing the crazed spark as it morphed into genuine confusion. “What were we talking about?”

“You were about to escort me inside for a trade,” the soldier groused, doing his best to loom over the bent frame of the taller man.

“Exactly! A trade! Just what I said, right?” Junkrat grinned and hooked an arm around Jack’s shoulders, forcing the soldier to bow in an attempt to minimize contact. “You’re the best scout, 76. Not like those uptight assholes 35 and 87! They came around earlier, yanno? Called us squatters! Told us to get lost and leave the goods! Well,” Junkrat giggled, high pitched and bubbly as he half dragged, half guided Jack to the entrance of the diner. “Roadie sent ‘em off! Won’t be a problem anymore gua-ran-teed!”

Jack didn’t bother masking his sigh as door swung closed behind him; that explained the smell and the craters he saw outside, and he idly wondered if command even knew two scouts were missing. He’d marked off this route as dangerous and not worth the trouble before, but that didn't seem to stop hotheaded newbies from trying their luck with Junkrat's assorted mania and Roadhog's thin patience. The allure of the Junkers’ supposed haul composed of various treasures and no small amount of expensive alcohol was often the end of many a cocksure  man. The only thing that kept Jack safe here was his willingness to circumvent protocol to trade and his status as a 'friend', but even that title could be as shallow as a puddle in summer some days.

“So whaddya got this fine evenin’, 76?” Junkrat squawked as the diner door whined closed behind them. He made no small show of looking Jack up and down as if appraising a cut of meat. “ And whaddya want?”

Though the seasoned soldier wasn’t fully prepared to trade for the things he _wanted_ , he always had something on hand to get what he _needed_. Jack moved further into the diner, putting distance between himself and the walls choked with makeshift machinery and disassembled weapons, down the cramped row of cracked pleather seats bleeding foam and sharp springs while shrugging off his backpack. The junker shadowed him, kicking aside discarded tools and scrap as though making an effort to clean up for his ‘guest’. Settling on the furthest booth opposite a boarded window, Jack carefully placed his pack on the rickety metal table. He rustled through the bag, thanking his enhancements for allowing him to carry the extra junk, just in case.

“For this, the floor for the night. Mako still collecting those onion squid things?” he grunted as he pulled out a small grey plastic box. “Got a lizard one here. Says it’s rare, one of eight.”

Junkrat was quick to swipe the bauble from Jack’s outstretched hand, peeking inside the manhandled packaging. With an overly-excited ‘Oooh!’, the junker’s eyes twinkled.

“A Murloc-Mari! Haven’t seen one, but I dunno, you stay right there, back in a tick!”

The junker practically vibrated out of the room, clanking down the aisle, bouncing over the diner’s bar and through the peeling double doors of the kitchen. When the muted voices of the Junkers floated back to him, Jack allowed a moment for another exasperated sigh, hand flying up to scrub down his face and bumping ineffectively against his visor. He could already feel the onset of a headache brought on by both Junkrat’s irritatingly bright spunk and the overuse of his equipment. He couldn’t help but grit out a ‘punk’ as he dug out a near-full pill bottle of anti-inflammatories. Shaking out a few into a pocket of his pack, the soldier clacked the lid back on just as Junkrat returned sans box.

“Roadie says for that you can have the floor _and_ a pillow!” The younger junker tossed a yellowing, beat-up cushion. “Really liked it, he did, says you got an eye for the good stuff! Not in as many words but, well, I know what I’m talkin’ about!” Junkrat welcomed himself back into Jack’s personal space, spindly hands twitching as though to dig through the soldier’s things himself. “Now what else you got, whatcha got there? Cough it up old man, come on come on!”

Jack shook the pill bottle like a bag of cat treats, yanking it away from Junkrat’s enthusiastic reach before displaying the label for the thief’s appraising eye.

“Mostly full. Prescription. Military. Not expired. For it, food for the night and an IOU on your end.” He kept a firm grip on the bottle as the skinnier man reached again, not as keen to allow the medicine to leave his hands as easily as the toy. “I want your word, Jamison. You remember what happened last time you didn’t keep up your end of the bargain.”

Junkrat’s crooked teeth audibly ground as he scowled, eyebrows furrowing, demeanor visibly soured. “Yeah, came out _all right_ , damned prick,” the junker growled and clanged his prosthetics together. “If it weren’t for you I’d have been a goner.”

Jack’s wry smirk at the poor joke was unseen behind the mask. “Deal?”

As though a storm cloud had lifted, the skinnier man wheeled backwards, hand to his forehead and scrawny chest puffed dramatically. “But of course! Oh, you wound me, sir soldier seventy by six! How could you _ever_ think Jamison Fawkes would go back on his word?!” With a crooked grin, the junker took another ineffective swipe at the bottle, more for show and play than genuine effort before hopping to his feet and teetering back over the bar.

With an alarmingly loud clatter and the unseen hiss of a blowtorch, Junkrat wheeled around with a cracked plate of something brown, steaming, and genuinely unidentifiable. The smell was nauseatingly greasy and alarmingly porcine. “For a bottle of genuine grade-A military ibu I give you a plate of Rutledge’s Finest!”

Jack carefully stamped down his enhanced nose, breathing through his mouth and doing his best to hide the way his chest heaved with disgust.

“Not to insult the chef,” Jack choked, throat closing at the possibilities of what sort of meat the Junkers could possibly have come across on this side of the city, “but I’m old, can’t do all that grease. Gives me uh - heartburn.” He waved a quick gesture to a haphazard shelf crammed between junked machinery. “Canned’s fine.”

The sudden silence was unnerving, and Jack quietly cursed himself. Insulting Junkrat was one thing, but even a whiff of slander directed at the maniac’s companion was another. He let the silence play, stock still, hoping the volatile scrap-gremlin would lose his train of thought. The younger man’s face flashed a complex myriad of emotions as though attempting to decipher whether or not the elder man had disparaged his friend. The plate of mush tipped dangerously in his distracted grip.

“Aw alright,”  the man crowed as he came back to himself, settling on his trademark ear-splitting grin. “More for me then! Take your pick, two cans, you’re a big boy after all! You can warm ‘em up on Vera in the corner!” Junkrat threw a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing at a hulking amalgamate of twisted metal and frayed tubing. What once might have been some sort of engine was now, impossibly, a makeshift stove.

The soldier didn’t answer, taking his pick of two worn containers of franks and beans and tearing their tops off with an easy twist of his wrist. He’d rather take his chances choking down cold hyper-preserved sludge than wrestle with one of the Junkers’ fiery scrap demons. Settling in a corner between the back of his claimed booth and the diner wall, Jack fully unlatched his visor, thoroughly rubbing his eyes and scrubbing his face. He popped the pain-relievers he had stored and chased them down with the congealed mixture of protein and fiber, while Junkrat resumed whatever tinkering he’d been invested in before he was interrupted by Jack’s arrival. When he was done, stomach full and body sore, he pulled his pack into his chest and hugged it tightly, settling against the cushion he’d been afforded. He’d do a rundown of his things in the morning before he left.

For now, he was safe from the outside world’s alien cacophony calling to him as the moon rose high over the horizon. With the moan of the old building in the wind, the steady sputtering of the junker’s machinery, and the scent of the mildewed pillow to distract him, Jack allowed the intense rolling murmur of Junkrat’s mad work-ramblings to lull him to sleep.

 

\----

 

The red morning light invaded the temporarily silent sanctity of the Junkers’ hovel, spilling  between bullet holes in the walls and the slats of the diner’s boarded windows. It cast an eerie glow through thick motes of dust that drifted lazily in the air, and painted the interior of the diner in unearthly tones of gold, burgundy, and umber. The light set about its duties, warming cracked tile and rusted metal, and the dark leather of one tired super soldier's jacket.

The waking world returned to Jack too quickly, comfort swallowed by stuffy air and his body's protests. His joints popped as he rose, but the usual aches and pains from sleeping on the floor had been dampened somewhat by the humid warmth of the junker’s repose. The old soldier was fully awake in minutes, muscles twitching and the skin around his eyes tense as though he might never blink again. Slow, groggy mornings wrapped around the warmth of a soft bed or firm body were a luxury he hadn’t had in years; he rarely reveled in the morning. Jack gathered himself quietly, mindful of his still sleeping host, and began to set his supplies out on the bar for inspection. One quick glance down the room confirmed that Junkrat was still passed out on a booth, legs dangling far too close to the opening of a furnace. Jack was in no mood to entertain the nosy, hyperactive man as he took stock of his belongings.

Jack stretched his legs against the bar as he tallied his items, taking extra care to inspect his weapons and supplies after spending the night with the two rather prolific thieves. He only had one more run ahead of him before he reached Point Delta. While he wanted it to be done with sooner rather than later, rushing his routine would only serve to cause him more grief than good.

As he finished scrubbing the grime out of the barrel of his pistol, Junkrat finally stirred from his slumber. Grumbling unintelligibly, the sleep-addled junker dragged himself across the aisle and over the bartop, eyes barely open.

Junkrat was blessedly muted as he went about whatever his morning routine was. They both worked in an almost comfortable, companionable quiet. It was only the sudden, sharp smell of something pleasantly familiar that pulled Jack out of his pattern. The mechanic was more attentive than he looked, and caught the tilt of Jack’s head as the soldier peered at the semi-manual contraption cobbled together for the expressed purpose of brewing coffee.

“Oi, y’wanna stay for a cuppa and gimme the terms of that IOU?” the junker mumbled, still rubbing sleep from his eyes. “It’s half-calf, absolute shit stuff, staler than week old bacon in the sun but Roadie won’t let me have regular ‘n I guess it’s better than nothin’.”

“You remembered?” the old soldier grunted in surprise, both at the uncharacteristically generous offer and at the other man’s words. The younger Junkers’ failing memory was no secret.

Junkrat scoffed, pointing an accusing finger in Jack’s direction. “Don’t you get on about that with me, I get enough from the fatso back there!” He crossed his arms petulantly and hooked his sharp chin to the workbench near Vera. “Wrote it down on me pad, won’t forget it if it’s there.” With that, the junker turned, occupying himself with insulting the coffee and the coffee machine, gathering up a few dusty but well-loved mugs while Jack finished packing his bag.

With a hearty clack, a fresh mug of hot coffee was shoved into Jack’s view. Junkrat’s own mug was already half empty, and the fire of insanity was back in his eyes. “Now”, Junkrat squawked, voice grinding back up to its usual earsplitting timbre, “spit it out, tell me what you want, I hate waiting!”

Jack unlatched the bottom half of his visor, confident that enough of his rather bland facial features were obscured, and sipped at the coffee. He took a bit of pleasure at the irritated scrunch of Junkrat’s entire body as he made the junker wait.

“You need to learn to slow down,” he chuckled, and raised his hand to silence the inevitable noise as the junker’s mouth split wide to shout an angry retort. “What I handed over is enough for someone else. I know your prices. But what plus that IOU would be enough to get _me_ drunk?”

Junkrat’s open mouth froze wide in thought, before his teeth clacked closed and lips pursed in calculation. “You? Big man, eats us out of house and home whenever he comes by, drank Roadie under the table once… You... you...” Junkrat’s eyes unfocused, tracking paint flecking from the door.

Jack rapped a knuckle on the rusted bartop. “Focus, Jamison.”

“YOU!” Junkrat snapped, “ya nasty little shitheel, for _you,_ two more bottles of that ibu, same stuff, full this time! Don’t think I didn’t see you cheaping us on that last bottle.”

Jack sighed, tapering off into an irritable growl. It was a bit of a steep price. He should have known better than to accept the coffee; free was rare with the Junkers, and both of them were as miserly as they were violent. Well. He’d figure it out one way or another. Always did.

“Fine, deal.”

The rat’s grin split from ear to ear. “Excellent! Alright finish your joe, tired of lookin’ at your ugly mug, I got better things to do than babysit some cranky old man!”

Jack wordlessly downed the searing hot beverage, latching his visor back in place before allowing himself to be guided to the door and across the booby-trapped lot.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second thing I've ever written in eight years. It's actually beta'd this time, and a huge shout out to my wonderful betas who helped!  
> I intend to have a small art piece accompanying each chapter, but sometimes my projects get away from me and I may not always have time to write AND draw. If that happens, I'll most likely edit chapters to include the art piece at a later time.  
> For those of you who have been following my development of this AU, and encouraging me to bring the vision to life, thank you so much for your love and support! I'm super nervous about this!  
> This first chapter is rather Jack-focused, but it's definitely going to pick up in the next one.  
> Please make sure you keep an eye on the tags, as they will be updating as the story progresses, and please leave a comment if you're interested!


End file.
